In China, Huntsman Leaves Them Guessing

In China, Jon Huntsman’s latest project has been greeted with far less excitement than his last one. The announcement of his candidacy on Tuesday drew scant attention from the state-backed media. In one of the few detailed stories to appear recently on his bid, the China Business Newssaid last week, “Jon Huntsman’s prospects are not quite clear. He is not widely known by the American public except for the elite circle in Washington D.C. and the state of Utah. His campaign strategy is moderate, which will not help him to gain enough trust within the Republican Party.”

It’s a long way from the cheerful reception that Huntsman received as an arriving U.S. Ambassador less than two years ago. Fluent Mandarin and an adopted Chinese daughter made him a media favorite. But by the time he left in April, having cut short his job in order to run for President, he had baffled the Chinese establishment and allowed himself to be swept—wittingly or otherwise—into Communist Party conspiracy theories about Western intentions to spread democracy. His appearance at a rally inspired by unrest in the Middle East—which Ryan Lizza rightly enshrined as “The Huntsman Walk”—was widely perceived among Chinese counterparts as a provocation, despite his adamant denials. In his farewell speech, Huntsman said, “the United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur.”

The Huntsman campaign has hardly moved to patch up relations; on the contrary, it has seemed inclined to want to tease out the attractive bits of his foreign experience from the less convenient facts that he was doing anything at the behest of a Democrat. Just one day before announcing his candidacy, his campaign’s Facebook account posted a photo of the candidate with the Dalai Lama, which A.F.P. identified as a ten-year-old photo from his time as governor of Utah. By contrast, his twenty-month stint in Beijing yielded just two photos of him, each on a bicycle in a section entitled “On Two Wheels,” reserved mostly for his affection for the motorized variety. The choice of photos did not go unnoticed here, and attracted a story in the Global Times today, (h/tWall Street Journal.) though it has not attracted much public clucking.

Why is Huntsman so cool on China? The Chinese press has a theory, according to the China Business News: “His experience as the U.S. Ambassador to China is a double-edged sword. None of his rivals will neglect the fact that the profits of his family business in China has increased up to fifty-seven per cent during his term.” (A piece on that subject last week has been widely mentioned in the Chinese press.)

That might be a reason—and the tangle of family and business resonates widely in China—but the press in a one-party state can be forgiven for failing to grasp just how much more urgent it is for a Republican candidate to hasten to distance himself from the assignment he so recently relished at the pleasure of a Democratic President.

Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, and covers politics and foreign affairs.